Political discourse, pared down over the years to catchphrases and campaign slogans, has reached a new benchmark in brevity through social media. Take the latest hashtag battle sweeping Twitter on Tuesday. Having decried Romney’s tax cuts for the rich as “reverse Robin Hood”, Obama’s was the opening sally, taking off as #romneyhood. Romney returned fire with #obamaloney and as both men competed for LOL points, political rhetoric hit a new low.

Let’s start by blaming the US president. Here’s Obama coining the phrase at a campaign stop in Stamford, Connecticut on Monday:

Way harsh. Twitter’s truncated form may mean longform analysis is not best expressed through the medium, but it can be linked to and shared, along with smart discussion of the election issues. And the forum has other uses: as a platform on which to engage directly with the candidates or at least their campaign teams on their respective Twitter accounts – @BarackObama and @MittRomney – and even as a means of gauging how they’re faring, thanks to Twitter’s political index, which evaluates millions of tweets a day to measure users’ feelings towards the two candidates.

But whatever conclusions you choose to draw about the medium following Tuesday’s hashtag battle, it seems increasingly clear that when it comes to #Romneyhood versus #Obamaloney, both sides are losing: